Scambos and his colleagues had created the Mosaic of Antarctica map by layering hundreds of digital images of Antarctica taken by Aqua and Terra MODIS between late 2003 and early 2004. To help Fricker ...

Because scientists know which wavelengths of energy each greenhouse gas absorbs, and the concentration of the gases in the atmosphere, they can calculate how much each gas contributes to warming the ...

Arctic sea ice occupies an ocean basin mostly enclosed by land. Because there is no landmass at the North Pole, sea ice extends all the way to the pole, making the ice subject to the most extreme ...

Forged in the heart of aging stars, carbon is the fourth most abundant element in the Universe. Most of Earth’s carbon—about 65,500 billion metric tons—is stored in rocks. The rest is in the ocean, ...

Dirty snow usually melts faster than fresh snow because it absorbs more energy from the Sun, and that’s not just a problem in sooty, gritty cities. Except for some mountains and high plateaus, snow ...

Tiny Vectors, Big Problems Between 2004 and 2006, islands in the western Indian Ocean experienced an unprecedented outbreak of chikungunya. At least 200,000 people on the island of La Reunion were ...

The animation at the top of this page shows a wide view of Pine Island Glacier (PIG) and the long-term retreat of its ice front. Images were acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging ...

Since 1999, Earth Observatory has published 16,000+ images. To celebrate our 20th anniversary and the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, we want you to pick our all-time best image. Each week from March ...

Then came the International Geophysical Year (IGY). Scientists from around the world designated the period from July 1957 through December 1958 to be a time for international collaborative efforts to ...

Swirling white clouds, deep blue oceans, and multicolored landscapes come to life on the pages of NASA’s new photo essay Earth, a collection of dramatic images captured by satellites. Video transcript ...

Bastiaanssen then set his eyes on the other extreme: he found nearly the coldest pixel in the thermal data. (The coldest pixels, says Allen, are usually standing water or data artifacts.) Since ...

Less than two years after dissecting the head of the great white shark, Steno completed a manuscript on the geology of Tuscany. The locale was a shrewd choice; it celebrated the homeland of his ...